NYPL Labs: ⌘⇪S: Preserving Digital Artifacts

Date and Time
October 16, 2012
Event Details

A NYPL Labs talk with Ben Fino-Radin - FREE
 

Ensuring the longevity of a work of art is a complex act. Thankfully, slowing the deterioration of physical artifacts is a well established area of practice. More and more though, museums are faced with preserving works of art that are born-digital – reliant on technology, with no analog counterpart. Due to the unstoppable cycle of obsolescence, the volatile nature of storage media, and the transient behavior of the web, contemporary works created with todays technology often do not function tomorrow. Ben Fino-Radin, Digital Conservator of Rhizome at the New Museum, joins us to talk about how institutions collect, preserve, and steward born-digital works of art.

Speaker

Ben Fino-Radin is an artist and researcher specializing in information science, and the preservation of digital culture & ephemera. An artist by training, he received his B.F.A from Alfred University, and is currently pursuing Masters degrees in Library & Information Science and Digital Art at Pratt Institute. As Digital Conservator at Rhizome, Ben oversees the development of Artbase, an online archive of digital art. He actively monitors and creates new records on art works, and drafts policies and procedure for the preservation of digital work, keeping Rhizome on the cutting edge of research and development on the preservation of digital materials. He also collaborates with a team on the repair of artworks that fall victim to obsolescence, as well as supporting the ingest of digital archival materials.

NYPL Labs

NYPL Labs is an experimental design and technology unit creating richly interactive experiences around research library collections and data. Based at NYPL's flagship branch on 42nd Street, Labs operates as an in-house startup, working closely with curators to develop projects that push the envelope of library practice, engage new audiences through user collaboration and crowdsourcing, and accelerate the flow of cultural heritage content, data and code into the digital commons. Keep an eye out for future events @nypl_labs. Get in touch at labs@nypl.org